Plot
In January 2004, shortly after officially becoming an American citizen, the Iraqi-born filmmaker Usama Alshaibi travels to Baghdad to visit the family he hasn't seen in over two decades. He makes the trip with his wife, Kristie, in tow.
Although Saddam Hussein had been captured by American forces in December, Baghdad is in a state of extreme turmoil with massive explosions a daily, frightening occurrence. Yet, Usama and Kristie are surprised by his family's nonchalance at the chaos. When a bomb blows up and rocks the entire house, Usama's cousin Tareef refers to the explosive device as a "nice bomb," hence the film's title.
An underground film is a film that is out of the mainstream either in its style, genre or financing.
Usama Alshaibi is an Iraqi-American independent filmmaker and visual artist.
'The Chicago Underground Film Festival (CUFF) is an annual international festival dedicated to the exhibition of underground and avant-garde cinema, video, and performance. It was founded in 1993 by Jay Bliznick and Bryan Wendorf as an alternative to the mainstream film festival circuit, which was increasingly dominated by distributor product."
Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election is a 2002 47-minute documentary directed and co-written by Richard Ray Pérez and Joan Sekler, and narrated by Peter Coyote, about the contested 2000 presidential election in Florida.
Adam Shapiro is an American co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a pro-Palestinian organization, the stated mission of which is to bring civilians from around the world to resist nonviolently the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. He became famous for visiting Yasser Arafat in his Mukataa in Ramallah while it was besieged during the March 2002 Israeli military operation in the West Bank and Gaza.
Micah Garen is an American documentary filmmaker and journalist whose work has focused on conflict zones in the Middle East and Afghanistan. He is notable for surviving a kidnapping ordeal in Iraq in 2004. He wrote a book about the kidnapping incident which included his confinement as well as the efforts of friends and relatives to secure his release; according to a report in Kirkus Reviews, the book was "extraordinarily compelling" and "gripping." In addition, Garen is a prize-winning photographer. He has written for Vanity Fair, Newsweek, The New York Times and other publications. Micah Garen and Marie-Helene Carleton have directed four documentaries for Al Jazeera's Correspondent series, including Identity and Exile: an American's struggle with Zionism featuring photojournalist Matthew Cassel. The film was awarded the top Golden Nymph prize at the Monte Carlo Television Festival in 2014. Garen has made a number of short documentaries, including one describing the lives of Egyptian women during the political upheavals in 2011 one on an American airman killed in Afghanistan and one on refugees fleeing Turkey to Greece by boat. With Marie-Hélène Carleton, Garen is working on a feature documentary from Iraq entitled The Road to Nasiriyah which was selected for Film Independent's inaugural documentary lab in 2011. Garen founded ScreeningRoom in 2015, an online community for filmmakers with tools including collaborative feedback on cuts, festival submissions and film grants.
Zadok "Duki” Dror, is an independent Israeli filmmaker whose films explore issues of migration, identity and displacement.
The cinema of Iraq went through a downturn under Saddam Hussein's regime. The development of film and film-going in Iraq reflects the drastic historical shifts that Iraq has experienced in the 20th century. The Iraq War which began in 2003 had an influence on many films being produced.
Koutaiba Al-Janabi is a British-based Iraqi filmmaker, director and photographer. He filmed Wasteland: Between London and Baghdad and the 2010 award-winning film, Leaving Baghdad. He is a member of the Hungarian Society of Cinematographers.
Sama Raena Alshaibi also known as Sama Alshaibi is a conceptual artist, who deals with spaces of conflict as her primary subject. War, exile, power and the quest for survival are themes seen in her works. She often uses her own body in her artwork as a representation of the country or an issue she is dealing with.
Acrassicauda is an Iraqi thrash metal band formed in 2001 in Baghdad and currently based in Brooklyn, New York. It is often credited as the first heavy metal group to emerge from Iraq. The original band consisted of four members and played concerts during the rule of Saddam Hussein. They became well known outside of the local Iraqi metal scene after a Vice magazine profile, and received even greater coverage with a feature-length documentary about the band and its troubles in Iraq called Heavy Metal in Baghdad. Their first album was released in 2010.
The Boys from Baghdad High, also known as Baghdad High, is a British-American-French television documentary film. It was first shown in the United Kingdom at the 2007 Sheffield Doc/Fest, before airing on BBC Two on 8 January 2008. It also aired in many other countries including France, Australia, the United States, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands. It documents the lives of four Iraqi schoolboys of different religious or ethnic backgrounds over the course of one year in the form of a video diary. The documentary was filmed by the boys themselves, who were given video cameras for the project.
Heavy Metal in Baghdad is a 2007 rockumentary film following filmmakers Eddy Moretti and Suroosh Alvi as they track down the Iraqi heavy metal band Acrassicauda amidst the Iraq War.
Jon Reiss is a film producer and director, and an author. He has made the feature film Cleopatra's Second Husband (1998) and the documentaries Better Living Through Circuitry (1999) and Bomb It (2007). He has directed music videos for artists, including Nine Inch Nails, Slayer, Danzig, and the Black Crowes.
Oday Rasheed is an Arab-American film director, screenwriter and producer born and raised in Baghdad, Iraq. Rasheed immigrated to New York City in 2012. He has been living and working in Los Angeles since 2022.
James Michael Spione is an American director, producer, writer and editor of both documentary and fiction films. Early on in his career, he developed a reputation for suspenseful dramatic shorts; his later career, however, has been marked by a new focus on short and feature-length documentaries for both theatrical release and public television broadcast.
Josh Fox is an American film director, playwright and environmental activist, best known for his Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning 2010 documentary, Gasland. He is the founder and artistic director of a film and theater company in New York City, International WOW, and has contributed as a journalist to Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, NowThis, AJ+ and Huffington Post.
American Arab is a 2013 documentary film by Iraqi-American filmmaker Usama Alshaibi. The film follows the personal story of Alshaibi's life in post-9/11 United States and concentrates on sensitive issues pertaining to race and identity. The perceptions and misconceptions of the Arab American community are closely analyzed and deconstructed over the course of the film to reveal a more complex culture of individuals rather than a singularly stigmatized group of people. Alshaibi himself was the victim of a hate crime in 2011 so the film therein tackles the subject of racism and oppression towards Arab Americans in today's society.
Joseph Feury is an American film and television producer, documentary filmmaker, painter, actor, stage dancer, and Academy Award winner. He is the husband of Academy Award winning actor/director Lee Grant and step-father to Tony Award winner Dinah Manoff. He and Grant are the parents of Belinda Fioretti.
Brent Anthony Renaud was an American journalist, documentary filmmaker, and photojournalist. Renaud worked with his brother Craig to produce films for outlets such as HBO and Vice News, and was a former contributor to The New York Times. According to Ukrainian officials, he was killed on March 13, 2022, by Russian soldiers while covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine in Irpin city near Kyiv.
